


Giving Thanks

by Basingstoke



Category: Black Books
Genre: Drinking, Gen, Hospitals, Smoking, Thanksgiving, dave's syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:03:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basingstoke/pseuds/Basingstoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Manny decides to celebrate Thanksgiving. It goes wrong, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Giving Thanks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coffeesuperhero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/gifts).



"I've decided we should start celebrating Thanksgiving," Manny said.

"Hwerh?"

"It's a Canadian holiday and they're still our colony, so it's ours by rights."

"Hgarrrph." Bernard ground his face into the sofa.

"And it's an opportunity to tell the people you love how thankful you are that they are in your life."

Bernard simply groaned.

"Those special people who so frequently go unappreciated."

Bernard subsided into snores.

"WHO STAND BESIDE YOU UNNOTICED," Manny said. After a few long moments, he sighed.

...

Manny was reading cookbooks. "Can't put the stuffing in the bird. Bacteria. Very bad. Mustn't do that, Bernard."

"I don't care!" Bernard said.

"Must be cooked separately to avoid drying the bird or undercooking the stuffing!"

"Boring!"

"Do you prefer sage and onion or apple and sausage?" Manny asked.

Bernard slapped him with a fly swatter.

"Ow!"

...

"Yams with marshmallows," Manny wondered aloud. "Green beans with tinned soup, Bernard. Tinned soup!"

Bernard didn't answer, for he had an enormous set of headphones over his ears, wound around with gaffer tape.

...

Manny massaged butter under the turkey's skin, humming happily. He wiped his hands on a kitchen towel as he turned to check the oven.

The oven was cold. He checked the knobs--it was on! But cold! It was broken! On Thanksgiving day! "Oh no! No! No, what shall I do! Got to--got to phone Fran! Use her oven! Does she have an oven? Buy a new oven! But the shops will be closed, it's a holiday! Oh, wait, it isn't a holiday really. What shall I do? Bernard, what shall I do?" Manny darted back and forth between the oven and table yanking on his beard.

Bernard answered by stomping through the curtain from the shop and clouting him over the head with a hardbound copy of Pippa Middleton's "Celebrate: A Year of Festivities for Family and Friends."

Bernard was hungry, he dimly registered. He'd been drinking that bottle of Leper Brothers Olde Peculiar brandy all day (four pound twenty at the off-license). He should probably...food. Food should be verbed.

He tore a leg off the turkey and returned to the front of the shop to read.

...

When Manny came around, he found Bernard poking him with a turkey leg bone. "Terrible," Bernard slurred. "Awful. Demand my money back."

"Bernard, did you--that was raw! Oh no!"

"I don't feel well," Bernard said, and then his head began to float off his neck.

"Stop! You need your head!" Manny threaded both hands into Bernard's hair.

The spinal cord wobbled between head and shoulders. Bernard frowned at him. "You are an awful cook," he said.

"It wasn't cooked!"

Bernard put the leg bone into the bin tidily. His body seemed to move separately from his head, which still hovered in the air.

"I want a cigarette. Manny! Where are my fags?"

Manny found the packet, but Bernard didn't grab it from his hands, which was strange. Manny placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it for him.

The smoke came out his neck. Bernard floated over toward the table, the spinal cord weaving through the throat-smoke. Oh, it was horrible! Manny wrung his hands.

"What! What are you looking at!" Bernard said.

"You! Shall I get some tape? I'll get some tape!" When Manny turned, he found Bernard's body wandering into the front of the shop. Manny was torn for a moment between head and body, but decided the body was more worrying, since it had thumbs, and followed it through the curtain.

Bernard's body sat down at his typewriter, loaded a blank page, and began to type. Manny wondered how until he remembered Bernard could touch-type. He looked over Bernard's shoulder.

DEAR MANNY, the paper read.

THANK YOU FOR A DELICIOUS MEAL. THANK YOU ALSO FOR ALL THE LITTLE THINGS YOU DO, LIKE CLIPPING MY TOENAILS AND BRUSHING MY SUITS. YOU ARE A VERY THOUGHTFUL MAN.

"Bernard! I knew you cared!" Manny said.

I ONLY WISH MY HEAD APPRECIATED YOU LIKE I APPRECIATE YOU. The body's fingers danced over the keys.

"Oh, Bernard!" Manny was overcome. He hugged Bernard's body from behind. He recovered himself with a cough. "I, er. Yes."

IN A MANLY WAY, the body typed.

"Er, yes. I'll put the tea on," Manny said. He ducked back through the curtain, careful of Bernard's spinal cord, and found Bernard's head resting on the table. He'd put the cigarette out on the turkey. "Bernard?"

Bernard groaned.

"Shall I just put your head back on your body, then?" Manny tried to pick him up.

"Argh! What are you doing? Stop!" Bernard shouted.

"It's not right! Though the letter was lovely! It was everything I ever wanted!"

The front door jangled. "Bernard? Manny?" Fran called.

"Help! He's trying to kill me!" Bernard's head shouted.

"I'm saving you!"

"What?" Fran pushed through the curtain. "Manny, you're bleeding."

"Murder!" Bernard yelled.

"He ate raw turkey and his head came off!" Manny said.

Fran whipped out her mobile and dialed 999. "Yes, ambulance please. Yes, my friend has a head injury and he's raving a bit. Yes, just a tot of blood. He thinks he beheaded his roommate."

Bernard bit Manny's hand.

"Right, I'll just hide under this table," Fran said, and did.

...

"STOP! NO! MY CIGARETTES!" Bernard reached out, flailing his hands at the end of his arms.

"There's oxygen tanks!" the nurse snapped. "You can poison yourself outside!"

"It's cold outside!" Bernard said. "It's awful here! I want to go home!"

"Be my bloody guest!"

"Bernard, not until the nice doctors make sure you're not dying," Fran said, pushing him back down on the bed. "You ate half a raw turkey because you're a very silly man."

"I was hungry!"

"You probably have brain worms."

"They wouldn't dare!"

Beside him, Manny stirred on his gurney, mumbling about typewriters.

...

Bernard was fine. The nurse, glaring at him, said he was probably so drunk any germs were killed on contact.

Manny was fine also, though the doctor was concerned about the effects of the head injury combined with his Dave's Syndrome. In the end he sent Manny home with a prescription for extra fudge.

Manny tucked Bernard into bed. "What are you doing?" Bernard asked. His eyes rolled, showing their whites.

"Your body appreciates it, even if your head doesn't," Manny said.

"Stop touching me," Bernard said.

Manny smiled kindly.

Bernard turned over, tugging the blankets out of Manny's hands. Manny smoothed them back down. "Bah!" Bernard said.

"Goodnight," Manny said, gliding out of the room, looking fondly at Bernard's back. Just as he closed the door, Bernard's hand popped up from behind the covers...and waved to him. Manny smiled. He stood outside the door, smiling at the peeling paint, for several minutes before taking himself to bed.

the end.


End file.
